I came across an interesting report by ExactTarget. According to the study, expectations by brand fans on facebook skyrocket after they hit the like button. While the older demographic expects more personalized and relevant messages from the company, the younger demographic is not so permissive.

That raises the fundamental issue why don’t the marketers ascertain the major reason(s) a fan has signed up. Their relevancy, speed and engagement tactics should be guided by the individual need states of their fans, not by the collective whole. Seems so obvious, isn’t it?

That less of it is practiced is evident from the desertion statistics. 55% of those who have liked a brand do not want to see any posts from that brand, 31% end up actually ‘unliking’ the brand. Can the marketers afford such a big ‘leaky bucket’?

There was an interesting post by Peter Bregman on HBR blog Why I returned my iPad. His experience with a new iPad was so engrossing and immersive, he had difficulty disengaging from it. The device built a cognitive enclosure robbing him of his me-time. He finally returned it in order to regain his self.

Our entertainment eco-system is going through a metamorphosis. The single biggest contributor is disentanglement of content from the form. Thanks to digitization, content can be delivered through myriad forms and devices. This disintermediation is empowering consumers to self-select and consume content at a time and screen of their choice.

Consumers are foraging for entertaining stimulation like never before. Their average home entertainment spending has been up, defying negative economic sentiments overall. According to Census data , the average American spent $771 annually on services like cable TV, internet connectivity and video games in 2004. In 2008, that rose to $903. By the end of 2010, it would be just shy of a $1,000 mark. Add to this $1,000 for cellular services, and the total commutainment expenses would total $2,000 per annum.

As the consumers’ daily intake of entertainment grows, there are concerns rife over shrinking attention spans and less control over own time. The volume of reading has been going down. According to eMarketer, reading got a mere 3% share of the total time devoted to all media in 2009. This was down 60% over the same period in 2008. Cognitive scientists like Nicholas Carr worry that the digital culture might take a toll on our deep reading capabilities. The motivation of going beyond the glut of text to analyze, infer and build insights is dwindling according to these skeptics. Edward Tenner sounds downbeat – “It would be a shame if brilliant technology were to end up threatening the kind of intellect that produced it”.

Steven Pinker, on the other hand, puts the debate in a historical perspective. He says critics raised a similar outcry after the invention of the printing press, newspapers, paperbacks and television. He recognizes that our brains will no doubt be rewired. Neuroplasticity of human brain suggests we will undergo a restructuring of our neural networks as a result of new digital experiences. He exhorts we do not view it as a one-off phenomenon but as part of a work-in-progress cerebral reorganization since time immemorial.

As long as our interactions with the devices do not turn dysfunctionally obsessive and we make room for introspective self-talk, we will be pumping sufficient goal-directed behavior. And will continue to drive up innovation and productivity.

Brand measurements are not keeping pace with the increasing levels of media complexity. We need a more reliable set of metrics and a robust integration to explain the phenomenon better.